Local lobstermen fear repeat of last year's glut, low prices

Area lobstermen are fearful that last summer's low prices could return again this year.

Susan Morse

Area lobstermen are fearful that last summer's low prices could return again this year.

More than 50 area lobstermen filled the meeting room of York Public Library on Jan. 31 to hear what Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher could do to help them with lobster prices during a glut as was experienced last June.

Warmer than usual water temperatures last spring drove lobsters into shallow waters to shed their hard shells at least a month ahead of schedule, making for large catches of soft-shell lobsters and low prices.

Usually on the Fourth of July when tourists arrive in Maine looking for a lobster dinner, restaurants and dealers are hungry for supply. Not this past summer.

"Around the 14th, 15th of June, dealers started calling," Keliher said. "Product was backing up on their docks."

Keliher was forced to issue a warning to lobstermen who talked of wanting to impose a de facto shutdown of the industry to drive prices back up, and who had expressed a willingness to coerce other fishermen to comply with threats of trap molestation and cut gear.

There were no cut lines, Keliher later said. The problem, and glut, was worse in northern waters than in southern Maine, he said.

Lobstermen who spoke Thursday expressed frustration over the price difference last summer between what they were getting for lobster and what tourists were paying in restaurants. While many diners got a bargain, Keliher agreed he saw signs in front of restaurants along the same main street in Freeport advertising lobster dinners for anywhere between $14.99 and $34.

Lobsterman Mike Waldron of Kittery said he sells his catch to the Weathervane.

"You would see it all over TV, tourists able to get a lobster dinner cheap," Waldron said. "When the Weathervane dropped the price, I sold every lobster in the facility."

Jim Baxter of York said, "If the government can control the price of milk, why can't they control the price of lobster?"

John Borden of Kittery Point added, "The problem is marketing, not the fishermen. We need to have an expert who does marketing."

Dealer Greg Tsairis of the Maine Lobster Outlet in York argued for letting the free market prevail. "The market will work itself out," he said.

Lobstermen in Maine last year caught 123 million pounds of lobster, up 18 million from the year before, but worth $3.7 million less, Keliher said. No one knows if last June's situation will repeat itself this year, he said.

In 16 meetings Keliher has held along the Maine coast this January, lobstermen in other packed meeting rooms have told him something needs to be done should it happen again, he said.

"We should do something," he said. "We don't know what that something is."

One thing he won't recommend, he said, is a proposal passed in the Lobster Advisory Council to limit lobstering to three days a week should the market again become saturated. He's learned from a previous restriction that lobstermen will only fish harder and longer when they go out. Lobstermen agreed with him.

The Department of Marine Resources can only manage the resource — which is currently healthy, especially compared to cod — and not markets, Keliher said.

Any proposed legislation would go through the Marine Resources Committee in Augusta, he said.

State Rep. Windol Weaver, R-York, the Republican head of the Marine Resources Committee, was in attendance at Thursday's meeting.

"I thought it was a very productive meeting," he said the following day.

Keliher, in his first year on the job, has managed to turn around the former tension between fishermen and the department, said Weaver, noting that "fishermen respect him."

The Department of Marine Resources will analyze information received from the 16 public forums. Keliher could then present a bill to the Marine Resources Committee, which would work with him on it, Weaver said.

Nothing would be in place until at least the 2014 season, according to Keliher.

Baxter told Keliher, "It's nice the state is being proactive."

Keliher and lobstermen also discussed long-term issues in the industry, including the up to 40-year wait for a lobster license. "We now have 20-, 30- and 40-year long waiting lists," he said. "We've skipped over a whole generation of fishermen."

Keliher discussed a tentative proposal for a three-tiered system of issuing trap tags — for 50, 400 and 800 traps — based on landings, or catches. The system would allow younger people to get a license sooner, he said. Under the tiered system, someone who hasn't used a lobster license in last four years would go into the 50 trap tier and then be put on a five-year wait to move up.

Keliher also discussed the possibility of increased funding for the Maine Lobster Council, a move that would help lobstermen with marketing efforts.

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